1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric equipment, in particular, imaging equipment such as photographic cameras or magnetic recording cameras, electronic office equipments such as copying machines or computers, or communication equipment, provided with electric or electronic circuits therein, and involving electronic circuit assembly by forming such circuits on rigid circuits boards or flexible circuit boards and incorporating such circuits in the electric equipment.
More particularly, the present invention relates to a process for forming a circuit pattern on a resin molded article adapted for use as a body or a cover of an electric equipment, or an intermediate member to be mounted on said body or cover.
2. Related Background Art
In a photographic camera or a camera for video tape recorder, various circuits such as a light-measuring circuit, an exposure calculating circuit and an automatic focusing circuit for driving a diaphragm mechanism, a shutter mechanism, a lens etc., are required, and the components constituting such circuits, such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, coils, IC's, LSI's, etc. are soldered onto circuit patterns formed on rigid or flexible circuit boards.
Due to the increasing use of electric control and the increasing complexity of electric circuits with highly integrated circuit components for achieving higher performance, cameras are requiring an increased number of circuit boards, and rationalization in electric circuit assembly is required for compactization, efficient equipment assembly and efficient replacement or repair of components.
A flexible printed circuit can be provided in a narrow space due to its flexibility, but requires a certain space when the aforementioned components are fixed thereon by soldering. Also flexible printed circuits employed as connecting portions B3, B4 shown in FIG. 1 for connecting a photometric circuit block B1 and an exposure calculating block B2, results in a complicated assembly since said flexible circuit has to be placed over a long distance in the camera. These drawbacks, of course, are not limited to cameras but are generally found in electric equipment.